Miss France risks crown over compromising pics: committee
2007-12-22

People Valerie Begue Event 2007 Miss France

The Miss France committee has threatened to strip the 2008 winner of her crown after the emergence of compromising photos.

"It is absolutely unacceptable. She must resign immediately, and if not we will make her leave," Genevieve de Fontenay, the head of the committee, told Europe 1 radio station on Friday.

Valerie Begue was feted at home on the French-run Indian Ocean island of Reunion when she won the award on December 8, but on Friday pictures emerged of her posing Christ-like in a swimming pool and suggestively eating yoghurt.

The 22-year-old brunette initially said she had no intention of giving up her crown and said she felt "betrayed" by the pictures' publication.

But she told a press conference later Friday that she would take a "period of reflection" before deciding, adding that she "understood" the reaction of the Miss France committee.

All entrants to the competition have to sign a disclaimer stating that they have never been photographed fully nude or in compromising positions.

The 1.74-metre tall (5ft 7in) business student said the photos were taken three years ago and "were never meant to be published." Neither she nor the photographer were paid for them, she said.

"I made an error of youth, I admit it," she said.

The revelation came as a shock to Reunion residents, who had only Thursday turned out en masse to welcome Begue at the airport as she returned home, the first islander to be named Miss France since 1978.

Phone lines to Radio Free Dom were jammed following the news, with most people saying they were "staggered" at the revelations. "It's not fair, she was representing Reunion so well," one woman told Radio Free Dom television.

Even the island's bishop Gilbert Aubry weighed in, acknowledging the offending pictures were "insulting" to Christians but offering his support for Begue.

"Valerie is a victim who needs support. It is not up to me to pardon her, she has not offended me," Aubry told a news conference.

At one point in the 2008 competition all contestants had paraded before the judges wearing bikinis and angel wings, something which is also a "perversion of a religious symbol," the bishop said.

He added that in 2002 he had sued the firm Pardon, whose director the bishop said had ordered the photos, for selling thongs embossed with an image of the Virgin Mary.